if i believe in death
by finaljoy
Summary: She died, but is not permitted to rest. She wishes to do good, but is not allowed to repent. Instead, she is caught between the world of an asset and a liability, and is allowed to suffer accordingly. Vesper, it seems, was never one meant for happiness.


_AN This is all gnarly, crap-I've-got-feels-and-they're-multiplying writing, and should be treated accordingly. Also, I am super pumped to finally have gotten all of these ideas out of my head, because ugh no one understands my Casino Royale pain, but also to have written a story centered around an ee cummings poem is very exciting. I adore ee cummings with too much of my being._

* * *

_if i believe  
__in death be sure  
__of this  
__it is_

She dreams of water, because she is certain a part of her was left behind there, with the murk of the Venetian water ways. Her soul, her hope, her true form of will, she didn't know which. All she was certain of was that her death had been on her own terms, but her rebirth had been completely forced.

She had been told how it all happened; James had tried to save her, but had given her up for dead when he felt no pulse. When MI6 had come along to clean up the pieces, they had double checked. She was breathing, she was an asset, she was kept.

But she was not allowed to stay Vesper anymore.

She is a new girl, a new name, and a new hair cut, and a pair of pretty blue eyes that are not allowed to be sad anymore. She is Celeste Durant now, a short haired woman that wears ridiculous high heels, colorful dresses, and is so traumatized by water that she is completely unable to take even a bath.

(everything is m's concoction, [except for her fear of water] and she hates that woman's wicked sense of irony.)

NotVesper is moved off to France, where she is settled into a lovely little job working with numbers and money and being generally helpful. She eats, puts on her notVesper clothes, cleans up, goes to work, goes home, eats again, changes into Vesper clothes, and tries to pretend that the shadows her candles make don't remind her of the dangerous people she had flirted with and nearly died with.

She is a miserable being.

_because you have loved me,  
moon and sunset  
stars and flowers  
gold crescendo and silver muting_

She thinks about him, every day and every night. He is a whisper in her soul, starting in her stomach and making her sick and unable to eat, growing and growing until he is in her heart and in her throat and out of her mouth as a sob. She misses his satisfied smiles and silly ears, and the lovely velvet that was his voice. She misses the way he kissed her shoulders, and ran his hands through her hair. She misses the way he would let her take his hand in hers, palm facing the sky, and just look at it. Vesper would study the creases and callouses and the little scuffs of dried skin. She would ignore the scars and whispers of bruises and focus on how warm it was, how alive.

When she goes to sleep, she feels lost at sea. He would be such a lovely heat next to her, an anchor and a comfort that she had been certain would never leave if he didn't want to, and as far as she could imagine (or let herself pretend), he'd never want to.

Vesper had never been really good at judging her own strength, especially when it came to the ones she loved.

The worst bit is when she has to bathe.

Showers were fine, because she couldn't drown in showers, couldn't taste the murk of the water in their clean waters, except for when she is tired and she loses it and she has to sit down and hold herself and try not to choke on her sobs because she remembers the blood and she remembers the dark and she remembers the wretched look on his face when he had stared at her in the water, her would-be grave between them.

He had been so confused then, like the truth was slipping through his all too-clever fingers, because he couldn't understand why she would betray him and he wouldn't understand why she refused to come out and be saved. He couldn't understand why she would slither to her death, rather than stumble into her repercussions.

That had been the main difference between them. James had never been afraid of the results of his actions. He knew they were coming and he wouldn't like it, but he wouldn't hide, either. Vesper was just a great big coward, and notVesper wasn't much better. They had both run away to another country rather than looking him in the eye and admitting that yes, she lied.

_of seatides__  
__i trusted not,__  
__ one night__  
__when in my fingers_

She has a handler. The woman is tight lipped, tall, and has very short red hair. Her brown eyes say that she doesn't have much time for Celeste, and even less for Vesper.

(but then, that's probably because vesper died in the water, and then again in a hospital room, and then again every time she looks in the mirror and has to say that she is not who she really is.)

Her name is apparently Mary, and she speaks terse French and clipped English, and really only drops by to make sure that Vesper hasn't done anything silly, like run away, tell someone who she is, or kill herself. Vesper would love to say that Mary doesn't care for her at all, but then that was dashed one day, when Mary paused by the door and said, "You should eat more. Skipping lunch isn't good for you."

Of course, she is utterly unsurprised that Mary knows she doesn't eat lunch.

_drooped your shining body  
when my heart  
sang between your perfect  
breasts_

Despite her distaste for the world she was so cruelly returned to, Vesper treats her body like a temple. Hygeine is a religious event in her apartment, something that is never skipped, never skimped.

She brushes her teeth twice a day. She scrubs down her body with soap, slathers it up with lotion, soaks her hair with all sorts of moisturizing products. She sleeps and tries to pretend that she is not awoken by thoughts of her brush with dark and wet. Her nails are clipped, her face toned, and she makes sure to take long walks every day at lunch.

(she is supposed to be having lunch, but really just nibbles on an apple. eating is...a trial for her. she tries to be good, but it often ends in vomiting, vomiting, vomiting.)

She is not happy, but she is well.

Mary finds this whole exercise to be ridiculous. Vesper understands, because someone who is so Vesper (hollow) on the inside should not be allowed to look so notVesper (glowing and healthy) on the outside.

But then, Vesper supposes that she isn't _really_ healthy on the outside.

_darkness and beauty of stars__  
__was on my mouth petals danced__  
__against my eyes__  
__and down_

Her regret over him makes her sick. Also her love for him. They both mix up in her head but mostly in her stomach until she is vomiting and feeling miserable. She only understands why a few days later.

Vesper had been raised by nuns, and for the first time in what she knows has been too long, she finds herself on her hands and knees, begging and praying for some sort of deliverance because this can't be true.

There has been something she has missed in all of the haze of being so unhappy, one little thing that makes her vomit yet again because no, no, oh heaven and hell, _please no._

She can't have his child. Not when she is like _this._

_the singing reaches of  
my soul  
spoke  
the green-_

M sometimes meets with her. Vesper wasn't sure if she would ever see the woman again (had actually prayed she wouldn't), but in the middle, she was ushered into a delightfully ominous black car by Mary, and was delivered at M's front door.

The woman was not happy to see Vesper.

"Do you have _any_ idea of what headaches you have put me through? The nights spent awake, cleaning up your bloody mess, the people that have suffered, the days I've spent trying to devise if you were better off alive, or if I should throw you back into those abysmal waters were Bond pulled you out? If it weren't for him, I would have, you know."

Vesper doesn't need it all spelled out in front of her. Bond was a very expensive tool, and having her around would break him. Vesper is a ghost, one that knows things and can maybe get things and should not be thrown away lightly. But should also not be allowed to roam free.

"Then what is it you are going to do with me?" she asks, because she has done wrong and must now beg for her punishment to be made. M doesn't answer her at first, which is interesting.

"You have done well in not trying to contact anyone or make a fuss, but now you must earn your stay. Do you know Jean Belgarde?"

Vesper nods, and so does notVesper.

"We need these numbers from him." She slides a paper over to Vesper, which she examines. After a moment, she nods, then looks back at M.

"How do you want me to get them? Am I to just walk into his office, root through his papers, take what I can and leave?"

"Hardly," M responds, a granite smile on her lips. "I don't care _how_ you get the bloody things, just do it and don't get caught. If there is a _whispe_r of suspicion on you, I swear I'll have you buried."

"I've done it once with water, how bad can earth be?"

M does not appreciate her attempts at black humor.

"Do not suppose that just because you have been allowed to live, that you are not _expendable._ You died a coward and you came back to life with a whimper. You, Vesper Lynd, have made an atrocious mistake, and now you must deal with your consequences, no matter how uncomfortable or demeaning or undesired they may be. So do not make _light_ of this, do not act flippantly when _you_ for once in your life must pay for what is done."

Vesper had never been on the receiving end of one of M's scathing speeches, but she had always known they were something legendary. She did not often raise her voice to a shout, did not demean people in a loud, obnoxious way, but simply cut away all of the mind numbing civilities and jumped straight to the problem. She made a person feel very, very small by showing the very, very big picture that they had just ruined.

Not once in the entire meeting does Vesper bring up the fact that she has a secret little nothing. She isn't really sure on the details, other than the multiple tests she had taken were all positive (that had been fun. it was a haze of tea and sobbing and things thrown at the wall and positives and regrets and fears and the thought of someone growing in all of that _water_ and she had eventually worn herself into sleep.), and M would want details, and that was one thing both Celeste and Vesper simply did not have.

Plus she had the feeling that this would all just..._blow over_ before anything became of it. Somehow.

She did not quite feel bad, though, when she walked out of the office and back into the ominous black car.

M, unlike everyone else she was now allowed to know, did not view her as that notVesper, Celeste. She was Vesper to M, through and through, regardless of the pretty lies that had been neatly stitched into place. Every time they meet, which is not often, and _never_ comfortable, M always refers to her as 'Vesper'.

She supposes that she has to like the woman somewhat for that.

_greeting pale-  
departing irrevocable  
sea  
i knew thee death._

Jean Belgarde is nothing to her might. What is awkward and terrible for Vesper is completely natural to Celeste, so though she hates everything notVesper stands for, she does it. A few weeks of idle flirting, of giggling and smiling and even a few lunch dates, and Vesper is allowed into his office, no questions asked. She finds the details that M wants, then charms her way back out.

Jean Belgarde doesn't even have enough time to wonder why Celeste isn't returning his phone calls before he is suddenly transferred to some distant Ukrainian branch. Everyone whispers 'promotion', but Vesper thinks 'execution'. She knows the damage a few little numbers could do.

She can't help but wonder what James would think. It was exceptionally paltry to the work he generally did (well, maybe. She wasn't exactly sure what those numbers were even used _for_), but it was something. It was good. It was a little bit of repentance without water dripping out of its mouth, and it felt sweeter than she ever wanted to admit.

_ and when__  
__i have offered up each fragrant__  
__night,when all my days__  
__shall have before a certain_

She loses that little bit of him she still has inside. It is an ugly day, when everything Vesper has to hold on to just slips out and away, in a wash of blood and pain and more tears than necessary. She just stands in the shower, shaking, the water running to try to negate the worst of the staining.

As she stands there, she thinks about calling Mary, about calling the hospital. She knows even as she watches her hands shake that she will never tell Mary, but maybe the hospital. It is almost shameful, how many prayers she offers up for a little bit of genetics and love that she had barely known for a few weeks.

This is the second time that she has had to be in a shower with blood everywhere in the aftermath of a death, but this time he isn't there to wash her hands and keep her warm. He isn't even there to hate her and tell her that he hopes she dies.

He's just gone, a shadow from her candle, and whisper in her heart.

She hates him.

_face become  
white  
perfume  
only,  
from the ashes  
then  
thou wilt rise and thou  
wilt come to her and brush_

And because it was all far too perfect to exist, something comes to break what little she has left.

She is fine, she is Celeste, she is a good girl in not making a mess or drawing attention. But she _has_ drawn attention. No one would have guessed that those three little numbers could be traced and stretched and molded into her name whispered into the wrong ear.

She is taken one night, before she even has time to fulfill her ritual of lighting the candles or pouring her tea. One second, she is there and she is miserable, but she is fine, and the next she is gone and she is afraid and she is very not fine. A gag in her mouth, a bag over her head, and then suddenly a stab in her thigh and she is gone.

When she comes back, she is cold and in a cell and aching and alone, yet again. There is no James, no Mary, no little child in her stomach, no M watching over her. It is her and grime and the chill and suffering.

When they come for her, there is screaming and blood and the scrape of bone on bone and she knows that this could go on for a very long time. She had brushed her teeth until her gums bled, had scrubbed the dead skin and the smell of drowning water away so hard that she had been left raw and pink. Her body was a temple, after all, and it would not be destroyed so easily.

She doesn't know why they have her, not even when they demand for her to give names and reasons and locations. She is just a drowned girl, whose inner self has been lost at the bottom of Venice. Vesper even tells them that, tells them that if they want any information, they're going to have to swim down to Italy and find it amidst all of that murk, because she had lost it so long ago.

Then they make her gag and choke on her blood, but that's an old trick. She had done it so many times, in life, in dreams, in decisions. Vesper had become so accustomed to choking, that she wasn't even sure what taking an even breath was like anymore.

They did not ask her any more questions after that. They just made her hurt.

_the mischief from her eyes and fold__  
__her__  
__mouth the new__  
__flower with_

MI6 were still cleaning up her pieces, and they did as they always would, and double checked.

She does not know how much she takes, or when they start and end (it's all just a wash of quiet then screams, quiet then screams, and she has no interest in keeping track). She is adrift on her sea, finally giving in, finally letting go and saying _yes, take me with you._ The knives mean nothing, the injections mean nothing, the rats mean nothing. It is all a haze and a bore, regardless of what her broken screams say.

She is tired of clinging to a life raft that does little more than keep her head level with the water. She does not float, she does not sink, she has been simply suspending these long months, and she is almost convinced that _finally, _she will be allowed to do what heaven always intend, and drop like a rock.

Almost.

At some point, she realizes that there are screams and shouts and gunshots. There is suffering, and it is not coming from her.

She has to look around at this, with her now purple and green and yellow eyes and her raw mouth and bloody fingernails and ragged clothes. Her eyes are weak, or maybe too strong, and the light shone in her face is enough to make her whine and turn away.

The voice she hears is inhumanly beautiful, soft and lovely and innately sad. All she can think is that this must be an angel, this is her moment, this is when she leaves this abysmal place called earth and is allowed to float away to something she may not deserve.

She is alright with this.

But then she hears "_Vesper," _and somehow knows things are not right. Angels don't pay attention to false names, but they also don't sound stunned and disgusted. People do, and there was only one people that she had ever cared for, ever heard say her name like it was a prayer.

Perhaps she was meant to sink, after all.

She cries when she is scooped into his arms, because she is pathetic and she is bleeding and she knows that _this_ is not how she wanted to see him, and this is not how she wanted him to see her. She wanted to be dust and ashes the next time her darling saw her, a cautionary tell of what had been. She didn't want hope soiled with hate, because she was selfish and he was not.

Her tears get into her blood and that just makes her cry more, and she's getting mess all over his suit, but she does not care. There is no lower state that she can be in.

She supposes that somewhere along the line he learned how to interpret broken sobbing, because he is all soft whispers and soft brushes on her hair. Whatever hate he must have been feeling seems to have been soaked up and washed away, and she has no interest in bringing it back. He seems to have deemed her worthy of forgiveness for some strange, bizarre, and unearthly reason, but neither she nor notVesper have the decency to disagree.

James may have been human, but he still was an angel. He cloaked himself in death and pain and bathed in far too much blood, but he was ethereal as he stepped over corpses and wielded his sword of fire. He was terrible and glorious, the kind of creature she had no right to touch.

But it seemed she had touched him, and now she had efficiently dragged them both down to hell. And yet, by the graces of some heaven that had actually heard her prayers, he was sweeping them both back up and out.

_thy unimaginable  
wings,where dwells the breath  
of all persisting stars _


End file.
